


Hollowing

by bigblackdog



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, M/M, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 1-1.5 Hours, Remus Lupin Lives, haunting with a happy ending, home is where the haunting is, not sexy hallucinations, rumination on absence, sexy hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:54:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22702774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigblackdog/pseuds/bigblackdog
Summary: After the war Remus drags his battered trunk and his battered heart back to number twelve Grimmauld Place.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 61
Kudos: 277
Collections: RS Fireside Tales Vol.2





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> the podfic can also be downloaded at https://archive.org/details/hollowing 
> 
> thank you dear gloom and muse for the best list of fest prompts i've ever seen, for my first extension, and my second extension. much love to my burrow of beta readers and collective concentraters <333
> 
> prompt: I am sick of haunting myself from within like an old house. — Erica Jong, Bitter Herb

Grimmauld Place wakes up quick and silent as an owl's eyes flicking open, alerted by some tiny creeping sound, some poor rodent scurrying under leaves. The curtains flutter, the floorboards creak, feathers ruffled just once, all its predatory attention fixed on the front door. 

  
  


"The Order of the Phoenix is at Number 12 Grimmauld Place," Remus says, even though it isn't anymore, hasn't been for a while. He drags himself up the front steps with his trunk, Professor R. J. Lupin's trunk, even though he isn't anymore, hasn't been for a while. 

The front hall is silent, a smothering veneer of thick dust lies undisturbed on every surface. The troll leg umbrella stand hunches in the corner, empty except for a knobbly twisted walking stick that whacks into Remus' thigh as he's trying to get his trunk through the door. 

He doesn't check any of the rooms or go down to the kitchen. Whatever infestations have mutated in the absence of the Order will wait. He drags his feet and his trunk through the dust and into Sirius' room-- their room-- and collapses on the bed they used to roll around in. He doesn't even brush his teeth, but if he had, he would have found Sirius' toothbrush lying on the counter underneath a caked layer of dust.

The next morning, stumbling bleary eyed into the kitchen, he doesn't notice his footprints have vanished, the path he tread erased, as if no one had walked there at all, as if no one is really home. 

He slumps at the kitchen table, letting his tea get stone cold while he reinforces the quarantine around all the heaving mountains of rubble in his mind; a drastic and necessary measure that leaves him weightless, drifting untethered to his memory. A past tense man without a verb.

He drinks tea from a bone china cup with gold inlay and a border of blood red pomegranate seeds. Hades' Chariot flies around the cup, forever whisking Persephone away. He holds the cup in two hands because he has a tremor. He shakes like an addict, has ever since that night at the Ministry.

The surface of the tea trembles, a perpetual seismic signaling, as Remus brings the cup to his mouth. The porcelain shatters, shards clattering down onto the table, cold tea seeps through Remus' threadbare robes, the wet spreading across his lap while he holds on to the slender crescent of broken handle in shock. 

He watches the tea drip off the table for too long before he gets up to shower. 

The towels smell musty and black mould creeps down from the ceiling. The water comes out the tap brown and gritty, though it eventually clears and Remus steps into the shower. The heavy click of the shower door closing echoes in the barren tiled room. 

He steps out of the spray and soaps up, trying not to think about the last time he was in this shower, Sirius' body next to him, everyday looking healthier, everyday his arms stronger around him, his mood more sour, except when they could be like this. Warm and wet and together, steamy citrus scented baths. When they were younger Sirius was a furnace, radiating heat, always throwing off the sheets, sweating in his sleep. After Azkaban his skin was cool, his fingers and toes icy. They took shower after shower, warming up.

He ducks under the spray and yelps, jumping back violently, knocking his shoulder hard into the door, stumbling out of the shower, out of reach of the scalding water. He stands on the rug dripping, blistering red trails running down his shoulders and stomach, shivering and burning, watching the water froth and boil on the shower floor before swirling down the drain.

  
  


Remus tries not to hear the plink of water from dripping faucets or the breathy drafts whispering through the dark corridors. Old houses are just that, and sometimes the monster inside is just him. Just another Shrieking Shack haunted by a wretched werewolf. 

Houses creak, pipes moan. Remus falls asleep, wand beneath pillow.

Sirius crouches over him, his warm weight rocking against Remus' cock. He's telling Remus something, something he can only catch snatches of. Remus lifts his hands but they're tied. Sirius smiles down at him, dark hair like a shroud, Remus aches to grab fistfuls of it. Sirius shakes his head. His rocking gets lighter and lighter still and Remus strains to nestle his cock against Sirius, where it belongs. Sirius rises up, still muttering bits and pieces of phrases that don't make sense. He circles his hands around Remus' neck. Remus nods frantically-- the choking will make everything make sense, if Sirius would just choke him everything would be in place, where it belongs. Sirius' hands tighten, Remus gasps, sucking in wisps of breath, his hands tighten, Remus thinks, yes, leave bruises, leave marks, his hands tighten, no Remus thinks, no this is wrong.

Remus thrashes around, hands scrabbling at the vice of sheets around his neck. He frantically kicks everything off the bed, still gasping, his head spinning, neck scratched and raw. 

In the middle of the bed, in the middle of the night, Remus shakes, arms wrapped tight around himself as the terror of it sinks in-- the sheets had been _tied_.

  
  


It's barely dawn, still dark and misty as Remus walks through the gnarled stump of Knockturn Alley. The people here managed to outlast the war, more desperate than truly deranged. The Death Eaters’ agenda had little to do with the poor small time smugglers, showy seers, addicts and potion dealers. But it still wouldn't do to be caught dabbling in Dark Magic these days and a few shops are boarded up. Although they needn't worry; the Ministry is in such shambles Remus wonders whether they even have the resources to prosecute war criminals, much less back alley dealers. 

He had visited the Ministry this morning and found it in disarray, a chaotic landscape of overturned desks and spell-singed papers scattered across the floor, every floor unbearably quiet, the few returning employees huddled together. And the brightest witch of her age sitting behind the department head's desk in the newly christened Department of Magical Beings Advocacy, her eyes bloodshot and her face too thin.

Hermione hadn't stopped moving, shuffling papers together and moving stacks of file folders from one spot to another, her wand wobbling precariously in her afro, quickly sipping coffee she probably didn't taste, as she told Remus yes, there had been some new poltergeists registered, in Wiltshire. Then Remus had dithered, regret and grief welling up in him at the sight of this bright young woman so obviously hanging on by the skin of her teeth. Regret and grief that was returned to him twice over when he finally asked, haltingly, had Sirius been registered as a spirit? 

It wasn't Sirius. Remus didn't really think so, he tells himself, but he had to check. 

It wasn't Sirius, so here he is, at the private archive of an eccentric collector who, like Remus, knows not all sentience can be easily categorized. 

Squinting in the dim and flickering candlelight of the reading room, he turns page after page. Across from him are replicas of Goya's Saturn Devouring his Children, twenty of them side by side like wallpaper from hell. Twenty pairs of manic bulging eyes, twenty headless bloody bodies grasped like grass uprooted by the fistful. The kind of cruelty that can only be achieved by gods and children and is all the more disturbing for it. He feels sick to his stomach and discouraged, a large stack of books in front of him with nothing remotely related to the haunting by bed sheets and plumbing he's experiencing at Grimmauld. 

He's been feverish since last night, breaking out in sweats and shivers and the stuffy air and sickening paintings don't help. The text blurs, he can't breathe, much less concentrate on the dense archaic texts in front of him.

The young clerk notices Remus' hands shaking when he returns to the books to the front desk. As he's checking the titles of the books and restacking them he says in a low voice, eyes downcast, "You can get a fix three doors down." Remus thanks the boy and hurries out of the suffocating archive-- he needs get out-- only to stop abruptly in the doorway, the heavy wooden door slamming shut at his back.

There's a fine misting rain, too cold for this time of year, the effects of the Dementors still lingering after the war. A rain fed by grief. 

Remus looks down at his shaking hands, the boy's words banging around in his head-- _you can get a fix three doors down._ It's been a long time since he's felt euphoria burning through his every cell, that cloying sweet taste on the back of his tongue, the whole world pulsing with color, everything whole and sparkling. His hands tremble violently, straining the fraying tether Remus has on himself. He feels far away already, a breath could send him tumbling into a chasm--

"Hello Professor Lupin."

It's Luna Lovegood. Remus shoves his shaking hands quickly into his pockets, guilty and embarrassed. Despite addressing him, her face is turned up to the bleak sky, hood down, her fine blonde hair capturing the misting rain and gilding it. 

"Miss Lovegood," Remus says. He almost asks what she's doing here but he's not her parent or her teacher, nor should he be-- addled werewolf junkie that he is. 

"Walking helps," she says, as if the weather is fine, as if they haven't bumped into each other in a shady back alley. Her voice hasn't changed much from when she was twelve, perched on one of the chairs in his office, feet tucked underneath her, asking him question after question about creatures he'd never heard of. Her voice is still girlish and breathy like she's always telling a secret.

"It's especially nice walking in the city. So much to look at."

Remus glances down the alleyway; there's a man slumped in a doorway next to a puddle of sick and another hungrily eyeing Luna. 

"Shall we walk together?" she asks, already meandering down the street. 

  
  


Luna invites herself over. It happens without Remus realizing and he doesn't have the heart to tell her he's too ill and broken, Grimmauld too evil. She looks healthier, cheeks pinked and figure plumped, but her eyes are constantly roving, her arms wrapped tight around herself.

"Oh this is a very sad home," Luna says upon crossing the threshold. 

"Yes," Remus says. "The kitchen is a bit better. I'll make some tea."

He gestures for her to walk ahead of him, watching as she drifts down the hallway in that dandelion way of hers, her fingertips hovering along gilt picture frames and antique french tables carved with long tongued gargoyles. 

She peeks into all the cabinets and opens all the drawers in the kitchen, almost absently, gentle movements, but Remus sees the restlessness beneath. 

"Careful what you touch," Remus says. "This house belonged to the Blacks." 

Luna nods. "Yes, I came here once as a child. Did you know Draco and I are cousins? Well, third cousins. Right after my mother died. I think Mrs. Malfoy felt sorry for me. It wasn't a very pleasant visit. I didn't see much of them again. Until this last year, of course." 

Remus doesn't know how to respond to Luna mentioning her mother's death and being a prisoner of war in single breath so he asks about her plans after the summer and then cringes, feeling like an elderly uncle. 

"I'm not sure I'll go back to Hogwarts," she says. Her voice gets even softer explaining that Ginny's going to play quidditch, Neville is sitting his NEWTs remotely, Dean is going to art school. She might just help her dad with the Quibbler for a while.

Luna doesn't sit when Remus hands her a cup of tea; cradling it close to her chest she goes here and there in the kitchen, their conversation fluttering here and there in much the same way. Remus thinks of the easy way children talk, the intricacies of social 'niceties' unobserved, instead curiosities and questions floating up like soap bubbles. She asks about Remus' tremor with a guilelessness that has Remus answering honestly without meaning to.

"I don't know exactly," he says. "It started the night Sirius died and hasn't stopped since."

"When he went through the Veil," Luna says, gaze far away. That's all she says, her wide eyes and intent gaze trailing over the room, unmoored.

"What interesting tea cups."

Remus doesn't say, _yes, they're trying to kill me_ , or, _Sirius hated these cups_. 

"There's something so charming about only six pomegranate seeds. Imagine six tiny little pomegranate seeds in the palm of your hand. And she comes back, like you can come back from anything." 

  
  


Grimmauld darkens when Luna crosses the threshold, saying she'll come visit again and Remus agrees, distracted by the palpable suffocation descending. The door slams shut though Remus is sure not by Luna's hand.

He stands still in the suffocating dark, arms wrapped around himself, that paralyzing childhood hope that if he doesn't move, doesn't breathe, doesn't touch his feet to the floor beneath his bed nothing bad will get him. 

  
  


Remus spends two days walking around in a daze. Wrecked and shivering from a vision-- a-- something-- he doesn't know what. Only that he walked up the two flights of stairs to Sirius' old bedroom after Luna's visit thinking his cracked open heart and hollowed out head might still be able to live somehow-- he'd always be broken but he could drag those broken bits around with him, tin cans tied to a hearse. 

And then he'd heard it-- a broken off moan, hoarse and-- he started running, stairs two at a time, flinging the door open, wand in hand, only to see-- only to see. Remus swallows the lump in his throat just remembering it. 

He'd seen himself, three years younger, almost to the day. Remus knows from the full moons seared onto his skin every month, intimate, irrevocable marks of time passing. He'd seen himself, spread wide on the bed, knees spread wide, eyes shut tight, mouth open and panting out yelled sobs of Ah! ah!

He hadn't seen Sirius. Sirius wasn't where he should have been, behind Remus, sucking on his hole, throwing his whole body into the obscene joy of making Remus wet and messy. Sirius liked it wet and messy, sloppy, dripping, punctuated by cracking slaps against his arse, his fingers digging into Remus' flesh dragging nail marks over the already blushing bruising skin. That's how Sirius liked it and god, Remus would give anything--

He doesn't remember after that. He'd woken slumped over on the floor, a bloody lump on his head he can only assume is from hitting the dresser on the way down, a dresser Remus is quite sure usually stands a half meter to the left of the door. 

He wakes up feverish and shivering, shivers that quickly progress to a kind of numbness Remus has never felt before. It's not the tingling prickling of blood rushing back into limbs, it's a holding of the breath, a heavy emptiness and all the layers in the world don't stop him from shaking apart. 

  
  


Luna arrives two days later bringing soft chatter and trailing silvery powder. "Dad is very busy right now with the Quibbler," she says, "what with the Prophet recovering from being fascist state run propaganda and he needed my help arranging the layout-- so much news lately, it's hard to cram it all in." She takes off her cloak, releasing a cloud of the silvery powder, "Oh don't worry," Luna says, seeing Remus notice her dress made of silvery white moth wings, "I didn't hurt any moths to make it. They all died from natural causes-- well as natural as any death can be, I suppose. It took a long time to find enough wings and even longer to find a suitable protection spell. I'd be quite sad if they fell apart every time I sat down." She hooks her cloak over the walking stick in the troll leg stand. 

"Have you not been sleeping?" she asks, quiet and immovable, having found a windowsill on which to rest her fluttering wings. 

Remus squints at her, platinum hair and silvery fairy dress abrasive in the gloom of Grimmauld. He tries his voice and merely croaks. He clears his throat and tries again. "I suppose I haven't been." 

Remus feels dazed, wonders if he's swaying, knows he should pull himself together in front of Luna, his student-- former student-- he's so dizzy, Luna blurs, headlights in the fog, coming closer, closer, Remus panics-- he should, he needs to--

He wakes up surrounded by purple flamed candles, a cosmic cast to the light and for a moment Remus wonders if he's finally died. 

"No, don't move your head, Professor Lupin."

"Remus," he says, voice hoarse, barely scratched out, dust scattered marks in dry hard dirt. "I'm not your professor anymore."

"There's always something to learn from each other. If it makes you feel better you can call me Professor too."

A waning crescent of a smile crosses Remus' face. "Professor Lovegood it is then." 

Remus moves to prop himself up on an elbow but Luna stops him again.

"Don't get up yet," Luna tells him and Remus listens, remembering pieces of a French phrase Sirius taught him years ago, something about an iron hand and a velvet glove. 

Luna stays all day, reading to Remus and bringing him cup after cup of hollyhock tea, urging him with that sweet childlike digging in of heels that tells Remus he'll be swallowing the hairy dregs of medicinal herbs once more. She comes the next day and the next and stops reading aloud, instead flipping determinedly through the Black family library as Remus' condition only worsens. 

"Perhaps I should owl Hermione," Luna wonders aloud. 

Remus opens his eyes-- when had he dozed off? "No," he mouths, his voice reduced to the barest brush of breath. "She's busy."

Luna frowns at him for a long moment and then stands, taking his cold cup with her. 

Remus drifts in and out, time ticking intermittently, he hears Luna whispering sometimes, sometimes he hears the whispers from behind the curtains and under the couch, the whispers drifting in on drafts, carried in from the attic, the corridors, the cellar. Sometimes he hears the whispers shouting and the shouting sounds like Sirius and the shouting sounds like his own. Sometimes he knows he's dying. 

Sometimes he links his pinky with Sirius' and crosses his heart and hopes to die. 

  
  


"Up we go, come on," Remus' mother says. "There you go." Remus opens his eyes, everything is blurred and hazy, soft around the edges, soft like his mother's voice. Remus starts to cry, it's been so long, so long since that sweet tugging ache of a beloved voice has found a home in Remus' chest, has been cradled between his tender ribs. "Mama," Remus whispers, the childish plea ghosting past his lips. 

His mother tilts his head back, a mother's firm hand on his chin. Cool little pearls placed on his tongue. 

"Chew, come on now, chew, chew them all."

Bursts on his tongue, acidic life, astringent, he's so thirsty, he's so dry. "Swallow now."

His mouth is opened again, inspected. 

"Good. Thank goodness. Professor Lupin, are you here now?"

Remus blinks. And blinks again. Luna's anxious face blurs this way and that, a rocking boat rhythm and just as dangerous, Remus could tip right over, tip himself right into that river.

Luna squeezes Remus' hand, a hard pressure and Remus looks down to see their fingers intertwined, the tremor in his hand steadied for a moment. "Professor Lupin, I think you should try to stay here." Remus feebly squeezes back, blinks, blinks, scraps of Luna's words-- _found a diary_ \-- _have to get well first_ \-- _call back Sirius_. Remus jolts, "Sirius," he mouths. 

"Yes, Sirius," Luna says ever so gently, "But it we won't manage it if you're unconscious so please, Professor Lupin."

Remus nods his head, Luna's wide blue beseeching eyes an anchor amidst the dizziness. 

A diary, Luna tells him, spreading roasted bone marrow over homemade bread-- blood and bread would help, she'd said. The diary of Columba Black, thirteen years old and filled with Black family secrets that never would have been allowed had anyone cared enough about a young girl's opinion. Only Luna, having found nothing of use in the official tomes, would think to look in a young girl's diary. 

A diary and a lineage stone. 

"Are you familiar? It used to be called a blood stone, you know, before the Knights of the Golden Core systematically eradicated all blood magic practitioners. Can you imagine how much knowledge was lost? Anyway, they're very powerful magical artifacts and only the oldest families would have one and even then not many, because the Western wand hegemony and colonialism have made all wandless rituals out to be only dark and dangerous. I don't think even the Malfoys have one because it's the sort of thing Voldemort would want very much. Anyway, not all the rituals are dark and dangerous although this one might be a little bit of both, but only because life is a little bit of both so--"

A lineage stone, a pensieve, pomegranate seeds: Luna outlines the purest necromantic blood ritual Remus has ever heard. 

"And then you'll need to call him out. Call his name, I mean. So you really ought to finish your hollyhock tea because I imagine one has to shout quite loudly to be heard in the OtherWorld, although I don't know for sure."

"No one has ever managed to call someone out from the veil," Remus rasps out. Remus knows because for a month after that night he had gorged himself on pulpy articles of longtime lovers dying within days of each other, heartbreak aligning their minds and bodies, and waited. 

He waited but he hadn't died, so he researched. The Veil was not quite death but it was also not quite life and no one, not even the only man ever to escape Azkaban Prison, had walked back out.

"I don't know why those attempts failed, but Professor Lupin-- your tremor. I think that, well my theory is-- part of you went with him."

_Part of you went with him._ Remus' heart stops. He has to close his eyes. Of course. How many times had Remus, writhing and blissed out with Sirius' fingers in his mouth, his arse, known deeply and inexpressibly that Sirius was _inside_ him. How often had they laid together, Sirius pressing his body so tight against Remus' through long breathless kisses, tongues licking into each other, had Remus felt the ecstasy of merging. All the times Remus had filled himself up with Sirius and Sirius with Remus, porous and open for each other, skin loving skin. Remus has always cradled Sirius in the net of his body and now his hands are shaking holding on to that rope pulled taut. 

"So you see, I think it will work," Luna says. "It was Persephone. I mean, I was thinking about the pomegranate seeds and I thought, if we can't find anything in wizarding literature we ought to look in muggle literature, so I did and there are thousands of myths of people going to the Otherside and coming back. All over the world, and some of them developed completely independently from other cultures; isn't that interesting? I think it will work." 

Remus nods, unable to find the words to thank Luna for her faith, for the secret insight only she could uncover. She squeezes his hand again and Remus thinks she understands. 

"Anyway, I think it would help to put you into a kind of trance state so I started researching ways to do that and there are some muggle drugs that--" 

She spreads more marrow on bread, strengthening Remus with her care and resolve. 

  
  


The entrance to the Black family crypt is through a door hidden at the back of the pantry. Luna has to prick her finger to satisfy the door and they hold their breath, hoping that fourth cousin's blood is enough. It is, the small streak of red greedily soaked up, absorbed into the magical seal over the entrance, strengthened for generations with Black family life force, one tick mark at a time. 

Before they cross the threshold Luna passes Remus a little blue pill that he swallows dry. And then they cross over.

Remus expects a dirt floor, a low ceiling, something like the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack, but as they step through the seal they find cool marble on all sides, so white it's almost glowing, there's a great shuddering, like Grimmauld is waking up, the agitated ruffle of a sharp eyed predator and Remus and Luna pause, waiting. 

There's only silence. Silence even deeper than underwater silence. Remus cannot hear his own heart beat, his own breath, he panics, pressing his hand to his chest, to his neck, to feel for a pulse. It's there, faint and trembling like his weakened hands. He looks at Luna but Luna is not looking at him. She's staring wide eyed, straight ahead at the first marble stair, curving down and away. Without looking back, without even seeming to make a decision, she's drawn forward. Remus follows her.

There is no banister to help Remus support his trembling legs, just a tightly enclosed spiral, getting colder and colder, whiter and whiter, a spiraling void; time skips and spirits away, down they go, Remus' whole body trembling, shaking apart, his strength a frayed tether, tugged on, tugging down. 

The staircase spirals to an end: a small amphitheater, marble dome, marble floor, marble walls sealed around them, and skeletons, standing upright, in rings around the room, a captive audience, a waiting crowd, three, four, five rings deep, the Black family stands, stripped and sterile, emitting the same eerie white luminescence as the cold marble walls. 

A slab too white to be real dominates the center of the room, the sort of stone for slaughtering sheep: the lineage stone. They have to weave through the skeletons to reach it, bony fingers catching their clothes. Remus stumbles, falling to his knees, and a bony hand reaches out, as if to help him up, a little nodding gesture, but Remus knows better than to take that hand. Luna looks up, face pale and anxious, from untangling fleshless fingers from her long hair. They don't say anything. Remus has the feeling his words would be snatched from him. 

A metallic tang fills his mouth as he approaches that dreadful altar, thick in the back of his throat like blood at the full moon. Luna sets the pensieve on the slab of blood stone, the site of centuries of baptismal blood letting, where Sirius too, was brought as an infant, a finger pricked and smeared against the unnaturally white stone. Remus takes the vial of his memories out from his pocket, shaking fingers struggling to unstopper it. As the memories pour into the basin they start to boil and froth, pitching and foaming.

He runs his forefinger against the sharp edge of the blood stone, lets the blood well up on his finger tip, then presses it against the blank white stone, presses and presses. The air in the sealed crypt starts to stir, a soft raising of hackles, and then, whipping around, blowing Luna's hair over her face, pulling at Remus' clothes, the pristine long boned limbs of the skeletons knock together without a sound, the wind tears at them without a sound, no breath behind it. 

Remus blinks and an age passes. He can hear the wind, taste the blood, mouthful of iron, feel lifelessness prickling against his skin, a million stabbing little pinpricks, shaking, sick to his stomach, swallowing convulsively, the taste only gets stronger, it's Sirius' blood on his hands, on his lips. 

And then he sees it, nothing separate, everything under the same light, without boundaries, without borderlines, everything bleeding, bleeding out, and the Veil, the stone arch of it, the fluttering curtain of it, the same as here and the same as there and the same as Remus everything part of the same Sirius too so Remus calls out Sirius voice carried out by the blood soaked wind Sirius Sirius.

Remus can see his wanting, his desire, surge through the arteries of the world, trusting the veins to bring him back, both of them the same and home again. 

He screams and screams. 

  
  



	2. chapter two

The fire in the grate is still green from Luna's departure when a too familiar voice says, "So uh, who is that? And why's she helping you raise the dead?"

Remus' stomach heaves and he tries to vomit but nothing comes up. There's only bile left, burning his raw throat and making him hack and cough-- god what has he done! He's been heaving since the moment he opened his eyes and saw Sirius, standing in front of him shocked and speechless, since he threw himself at Sirius and Sirius couldn't catch him, when Remus couldn't feel Sirius' arms around him, since he realized he raised the dead only halfway. 

"Hey," Sirius says softly. "Remus, don't. I'm here, alright? Maybe a little, uh, weightless and blurry, but I'm here. Thanks for calling me back to my childhood home, by the way, nowhere else I'd rather be," Sirius says, that beloved crooked smile only a blurred slash, watered down pigment seeping across the page. God this is all so fucked up.

Remus shakes his head, swiping the back of his hand against his mouth. "Blame your ancestors for burying their bloody stone a kilometer underground in the creepy family crypt."

"Always, Remus, I always blame them. Are you going to tell me why you started an after school club for necromancy? Was that girl dressed in moth wings?" 

Remus laughs, a rasping thing that burns his throat. Sirius reaches out to brush Remus' hair off his forehead but his ghostly fingers never land. Remus' hair stays stuck to his sweaty temples. They can only stand inches apart and stare at each other. Remus looks at watery gray eyes, eyelashes only a dark smear and wonders what Sirius thinks about Remus' more salt than pepper hair, about his very visible crows feet. He looks at Sirius' cheekbones, his straight nose, the cloudy shadow of stubble he would ordinarily shave. 

"Come on, let's get you into a real bed," Sirius says. "You can tell me the whole story."

Remus climbs the stairs slowly, Sirius hovering behind him as if he could catch Remus if he fell. 

"Have you been staying here?" Sirius asks, eyeing the glass of water and Remus' reading glasses on the bedside table. 

Remus nods, collapsing onto the bed. 

"Christ, Remus, why? Why're all the blankets on the floor?"

"Tried to kill me," Remus slurs, face down on the bed.

"Well I can see you've been doing great without me."

"Yep." 

The mattress doesn't sink in where Sirius sits, as if no one is sitting there at all. "No wonder you raised me from the dead."

"Didn't-- you're not all here."

"Remus, I'm here. I am. And you heard the moth girl, she thinks there's a way to finish what we started. We all just need some rest."

Remus ignores that. Luna has been right about many things, but Remus can see no way out of the reality that Sirius still has one foot beyond the veil and it's Remus' fault he's straddling life and death, probably for the rest of eternity. "Luna. Her name is Luna. She's a friend of Harry's. She was there that night, at the ministry, you were perhaps too otherwise occupied for introductions."

"Yes, you know how much I stand by etiquette. Only death itself could prevent me from observing the proper decorum." 

Sirius has always been able to make Remus smile despite himself, in the midst of the most fucked up situations, a little quip, a little kiss, and Remus forgets for a moment all that is decent and normal. 

"I missed you."

Sirius lays down facing Remus. "I missed you, love." 

Remus lets the words sink into him, lets them make him heavy, a soft welcome weight anchoring him in the world. "I missed you," he says again, because Sirius has questions, because Remus wants to tell him the answer to all those questions is simply that he spent two years choking on Sirius' absence. He says it again, the repetition only scratching the surface of that mountain of missing. I missed you, he says, trying to beat back the creeping doubt that he'll always miss Sirius, who is right here, who Remus will keep here, goddamn it all.

  
  


Remus wakes up to Sirius leaning over him sing-songing his name. 

"Come on get up, Luna is at the door and I can't let her in."

"The floo--" Remus says sleepily. 

"She's not at the floo, she's at the door. Don't ask me why." 

Remus sits up, scrubbing at his face. "M'so tired. This is the most tired I've ever been."

"You could at least pretend you're happy to wake up next to me."

Sirius is joking but Remus can't leave the slimmest possibility that he's not. "You know I'd do anything to wake up next to you."

Sirius puts his ghostly hands on either side of Remus' face, not really holding him, his tender expression blurred, a poorly taken picture, and says, "I know, Moony."

A knock sounds from downstairs.

"Let's open the door for that poor girl, eh?"

  
  


Luna's swapped her usual moth dress for a pair of overalls, shirt sleeves rolled up and bandana in her hair, all pink cheeked optimism like a brochure for a back to the land commune. She's even holding a bucket full of supplies.

"I think we should clean Grimmauld place."

Remus nods slowly, too tired to mask his disbelief. 

"I'm almost positive. I had a dream about it last night and I woke up thinking it's really all to do with the physicality of it. I mean, of course it is. Sirius is here mentally, but not physically, so we've got to fix things physically. It's very nice to meet you, by the way, Mr. Boardman. I don't suppose when you're back in your body you would mind penning an autograph for my dad? He's such a fan."

Sirius looks at Remus helplessly. 

"Let's just-- let's just have a bit of tea first."

"Oh, yes. Tea would be lovely. It's so nice to see you on your feet again, Professor Lupin."

Remus smiles. "All thanks to you, Professor Lovegood."

Sirius looks even more confused and Remus has to stifle a laugh, gesturing Luna ahead of them so he can whisper that Xenophilius Lovegood, yes the same Xeno that sold them gillyweed in fifth year, publishes a magazine that ran a conspiracy theory that Stubby Boardman and Sirius Black are the one in the same. Sirius can only ask, "Stubby Boardman?" before they reach the kitchen.

Remus enjoys puttering around fetching this and that for tea, while Luna explains her theory in more detail-- the magic of the lineage stone is inextricable from the house and the house is very sad, you see-- and Remus nods along. She looks so lively, so present, puzzling through the mechanics of magic, no longer drifting but sitting in one place, eyes bright and focused on Remus. He doesn't have the heart to tell her he doesn't think this latest theory will work.

"Do you take cream, Mr. Boardman?"

Sirius doesn't say, _I can't touch anything_ , or, _I'm Sirius_. He says, "Please, call me Stubby," and Remus smiles into his own cup of milky tea, loving Sirius so much. 

  
  


Sirius is in a rage. They've been cleaning for two weeks with no progress, every night the dust encroaching back in on whatever territory they managed to clean during the day in their own private stalemate, and Sirius, still incorporeal, unable to do anything but watch as Remus loses his breath and sweats and coughs through dusting the bannisters, scrubbing mould from the shower tiles, mopping grime from the floorboards, only for it all to reappear the next day. 

Luna is still hopeful, but Remus has watched Sirius' mood darkening, his patience thinning, all together too familiar to the last time Sirius was--

"-- trapped in this bloody house! Why the fuck do we have to stay here? I mean, go on, go ahead and continue this bloody useless cleaning but for christ's sake let's sleep somewhere else. Anywhere else! A bloody dumpster would be better than this shitehole. I don't care if I'm a bloody spectre for eternity-- literally anything is better than staying in this godforsaken pile of bricks another minute."

"You heard Luna," Remus says tiredly. "The lineage stone is connected to the house. Who knows what would happen to you if you left it."

"You really think this has to do with the bloody house?"

"Well. We did use blood magic-- your family's blood magic-- to call you back, with what amounts to basically the cornerstone of this particular magical home so-- no don't interrupt. Regardless of all of that, which does make a certain amount of sense, let's just say-- let's just… entertain the idea that the house is resisting cleaning because-- because it's upset with you."

"For hating it?"

"Yes."

"Remus, this house tried to kill you."

"Yes, but. Well it's not the house's fault it was filled with dark objects and dark people for so long, is it?"

"Not the house's fault."

"No. I mean, in a lot of ways… well, it's a victim of the Black family the same way you are. Trapped here, poisoned by them."

Sirius crosses his arms over his chest. "So not only do I have to stay here, in this horrible place, I have to forgive it too? You want me to forgive Grimmauld for making me miserable?"

"It's not really Grimmauld though, is it? It's your family and-- just wait a minute, I'd never ask you to forgive them, Christ, have some faith in me."

Sirius glowers but nods at Remus to continue.

"It was your family that made you miserable. And this place is full of miserable memories but let's just pretend, for a moment, that the house doesn't want those miserable memories any more than you do. Never asked for them."

"If it doesn't want to be miserable then why is it resisting all attempts to make it habitable?"

"Well… It's hard to… to let go of misery when it's all you've ever known. What if you don't-- what if you've been miserable for so long you don't know--can't remember-- what's there underneath all that? What if you don't find anything? What if what you find is worse?" 

Sirius hard expression crumbles. "Oh, Remus. Alright. Alright, we'll clean the house. We'll… I'll be… kinder to it." 

"I don't know if it will work, Sirius, I really don't. But what if it does? And we could--" Remus' voice cracks and he has to clear his throat. "And we could finally be together."

"Ok. Alright, anything Remus. I promise, I'll try anything." 

  
  


Remus doesn't say so to Sirius but Grimmauld Place is disgusting. And while the principle behind cleaning it up rings with a certain rightness, the house itself, in unconscionable disrepair, really does seem to resist the very idea of being habitable, much less pleasant. Remus catches himself considering the impossibility of it a given, a natural consequence.

It's not just dusty, it's rotten. There's a thick layer of grime caked together in mysteriously oily clumps. The wooden window frames are blackened with rot. The ceilings are buckled and warped, cracked and peeling with seeping moisture. The walls bear the tracks of muddied water weeping down their lengths. 

It's more than just the accumulated dirt of generations, more than just the rot of a house left unattended. Grimmauld is sick, poisoned for years and years, a blackened portrait of a family diseased by purity. 

A blackened portrait-- Remus stops scrubbing abruptly-- "The portrait!"-- a drop of Extra Strength Magical Mess Remover drops onto his leg and he yelps and then hisses with pain, pressing his hand over the burn. 

"What was that, Professor Lupin?" Luna asks.

Remus drops the scrub brush into the bucket and rips off his mask. "The portrait of Sirius' mother-- we can take it down." 

"Albus Dumbledore couldn't take that portrait down," Sirius says. Remus can almost taste the bitterness in his voice.

"Right, well. There were things we couldn't try at the time, to not risk discovery. We can be loud as we like now."

Sirius expression looks guarded but he asks, "What did you have in mind?"

If they can't remove the portrait, Remus reasons, they'll remove the whole bloody wall. He's done dithering around scrubbing grime from nooks and crannies. It'll take more than clean baseboards to get Sirius back on this earth. Remus blames the fumes from the Extra Strength Magical Mess Remover that he didn't think of it sooner. Nothing would make Sirius happier than never again encountering the shrieking visage of his twisted monster of a mother. If he has to blow up a wall or two, so be it. 

Luna helps him paint runes around the edges of the wall to contain the blast and then Remus has her shelter in the kitchen while Sirius stands facing the wall in question with his arms folded. Remus learned this spell from Sirius, fifteen years old and egging him on-- _Louder Lupin!_ \-- that maniac grin Remus was secretly, helplessly in love with. 

"BOMBARDA MAXIMA!" he shouts, and shouts again, his voice still weak from all the screaming it took to call Sirius out from the Veil, but by god he'll scream until he bleeds from it to get rid of this damn portrait, to get Sirius back. The curtains muffling the portrait fly open and Mrs. Black starts screaming too. She screams obscenities and curses that are drowned out by the booms and sharp cracks of wood splintering and plaster falling and Sirius Black laughing until tears stream from his eyes and there is only rubble at their feet. 

Sirius bends over heaving with laughter, slapping a spectral hand on his spectral knee and then he bolts upright. "My hands!" He claps them together, more laughter spilling from his lips. "Remus! My hands!" 

Remus rushes forward to hold Sirius' precious hands, warm and heavy. 

It's real now. It hadn't felt real, hadn't felt possible, with Sirius lurking around spectral like the Grim, here but not because the real Sirius could never be someone floating on the sidelines of life. 

The real Sirius has hands with callused thumbs, ink etched and bony, beautifully ragged with use. Remus cradles Sirius' hands between his own, bringing fingertips to lips and remembers all the smudges from motor oil, the hangnails from washing up, he runs his thumb over the slip of a scar from a cauldron burn in fourth year, a lifetime ago. He presses his lips to the fingertips that have opened him up in every way, fingertips that have pulled animal moans from his throat, that have plucked every tightly wound strand of self, softening him, hands that have gathered him back together again and again, in beds and on dirty floors of shacks and caves, hands that found his and pulled him back to himself underneath a hundred tables in a hundred smoky pubs, hands that always found his own, on dark streets and hospital cots, holding tight together through floofire and hellfire, a thousand apparations. Hands held together through the liminal nowhere of a Veil, that held together so tight Remus' hands shook with the pain of holding on, and now-- "Oh god, Sirius, your hands."

When Luna finds them ten minutes later, Remus still cradling Sirius' hands in his own, pressing his lips to them over and over, she only smiles and says she'll see them tomorrow afternoon. The door opens and shuts but Remus only has eyes for Sirius' hands, no longer blurred. The unfathomable but undeniable hereness of the crisscrossing lines of Sirius' warm palms, the surfacing glimpses of blue veins, the peaks and valleys of sharp boned knuckles against his lips. 

Remus falls to his knees, still pressing Sirius' hands to his face. "Your hands," he says. "Oh god, touch me, please."

They lay down in the rubble of splintered wall. All is quiet now. Sirius' hands leave soft smudges of white plaster dust on Remus' ribs, on his hip bones, across his cheek bones, and in his hair, He leaves handprints down the length of his thigh. Remus gets filthy on the floor as Sirius touches him, hands smoothing slowly over the arches of Remus' feet, cupping the bony jut of his knees. The dust hangs heavy in the air, thick as incense, and Sirius is slow and quiet, silent, his eyes trained carefully on the paths his hands mark on Remus' body, his tidal hands, lapping at the same permeable boundaries again and again. 

"Soon," Sirius whispers, a prayer and a promise if Remus ever heard one. 

  
  


Remus spells the half naked girls and motorbikes off the wall. "I'm not letting go of the rebellion," Sirius says. "It perhaps no longer needs to be all over the walls," Remus says. He takes down the curtains, releasing clouds of dust that make him choke and cough and leave a fine layer of grit on the skin of his neck and arms. The windows are jammed shut, their panes clouded with grime, but Remus forces them all open, scrubs each pane. The daylight reveals even more dust. He gathers the blankets that tried to kill him and puts them to wash.

He tries to get Sirius to remember any good thing that happened in his childhood bedroom. At first he says, "I'm sorry Moony, I honestly can't remember a single thing." Then Remus, cleaning out the subterranean landscape underneath the bed, finds a few dirty magazines, oiled muscled men on the front in low slung denims, and Sirius says, "Oh wait a tick," and proceeds to tell Remus every dirty teenage fantasy he had in this bed-- the first wet dream he had, the first time it was about a boy, the summer he let himself start imagining his friend Moony… 

"I'd imagine I got hurt somehow, Quidditch or something, something where I couldn't move, or my hands were hurt and I couldn't wank and you had to do it for me."

Remus laughs. "Ah yes, your injuries are so extensive you can't even more, but I'm most concerned about your poor cock."

"Well it had to be something drastic. Sometimes it was you realizing, after I got hurt, how much you liked me."

Remus smiles a little sadly. "Oh queer adolescence."

"It was impossible that you would just like me back."

Remus is almost forty, but he still keenly feels the impossibility of his crush on Sirius Black. The impossibility never went away, not with the lover he wasn't supposed to love anymore exiled, not with the lover he was finally allowed to love again imprisoned. He never grew out of the impossible patience of his queer adolescence; his entire adult life has been spent waiting to be allowed to love, entangling himself in the impossibility of it. He tells Sirius this, the two of them sitting cross legged on the floor, kids swapping secrets, breathing jagged edged nostalgia, and then Sirius' sad eyes sharpen, the edges of them crinkled and soft beneath Remus' fingertips, his lashes still thick, still gorgeous.

  
  


"We should just trash the lot of them," Sirius says, eyes skimming a stack of books in the library.

Luna looks aghast at the idea. "But there's so much here!"

"Yes and all of it dark."

"Do you think knowledge itself can be inherently dark? Or is it the way it's used?"

Sirius raises his eyebrows at Remus over Luna's head, and even blurry his expression clearly says _Ravenclaws_. 

"I found such a lovely diary when I was looking for books to help Professor Lupin. Actually, you might enjoy it, she didn't much like it here either."

"Not much worth liking," Sirius says, tossing a book about werewolf hunting in the discard pile. 

Luna thumbs through a large book of archaic maps. "Look, isn't this fascinating? It's not just the maps, there's a bunch of information on cartography spells."

Sirius looks up. "Actually, I used that book. When we were making the map."

"What map?" Luna asks.

"The Marauder's Map," Sirius says grandly. He spends the rest of the afternoon pulling cartography books off the shelves of the Black family library to demonstrate the genius of the Marauder's Map while the blurry curves of his ears sharpen and Remus holds an, "I told you so," behind his smile. 

  
  


"We are never going to use gold inlay china at fancy fucking teas or whatever the fuck meals happen in this stuffy room."

Remus rolls his eyes. Sirius likes to pretend he doesn't know all the ends and outs of aristocratic society.

"I like the china. It reminds me of you," Remus says. 

"I'm right here. You don't need reminders."

"Yeah well, considering our shite luck you'll probably get arrested as soon as your body is back and I'll have to pass the time somehow," Remus bites out. 

"Well I hope the crystal chandelier comforts you on cold nights."

Sirius glares. Remus crosses his arms. Luna hums to herself, flicking unknown spells at the chandelier in question.

"I'm sure it will!" Remus says nonsensically. He's tired of the relentless optimism while Sirius grumbles through every room, hating everything. "You could fucking try, you know!"

"I am! You're the one who's mad at me about bloody china and chandliers we don't fucking need."

"You hate everything!"

"I just hate the chandelier! I'm allowed to hate the chandelier!"

A shrill screech interrupts them as Luna pushes the heavy drapes open. Sunlight streams in, illuminating the chandelier, every crystal now spelled the different colors of the rainbow, casting rainbow colors against the walls. Luna stands by the window with her head cocked to the side, thinking, and then sends one last spell at the chandelier. It starts to spin slowly, gold, green, blue and pink drifting peacefully across the room. 

"Well if the chandelier is gay it can stay," Sirius says. His shoulders, tensed up by his ears, drop down. He rolls them a few times, smile growing, no longer bearing whatever burden this room laid on them. 

  
  


Something gives way and every little thing leads to some new body part rediscovered. Sirius starts watering the plants in the small garrett greenhouse on the fourth floor and each plant tended is a toe felt again. On a sunny day at the end of June Sirius cleans out Buckbeak's room. Luna collects all the loveliest feathers and returns the next day with a portrait of Buckbeak framed with feathers radiating out. Sirius takes deep breaths obviously trying not to cry and can feel his lungs once more.

Grimmauld starts to change too. The dark constellation patterned wall paper covering the first floor corridors becomes a gorgeous print of interlocking lilies. Like spring, every morning they wake up to fresh buds and tender shoots, the gargoyle crown moulding morphs into familiar stag antlers, the candle-darkened, moth-eaten tapestries grow new threads in the night becoming Gryffindor lions and gently swaying willow trees. The house seems to preen whenever Sirius lays a hand on her bannisters, curtains fluttering wider, blushing with sunlight when he says, _you know, with some actual couches this would be a nice room for reading_ , or, _Moony what if I had a workshop out back, there's plenty of room_ , or, _this would make a good room for Harry_. 

They haven't told Harry yet, asking Luna to guard their secret, not wanting to risk the crushing disappointment, waiting to make sure Sirius is back in his entirety. Weeks pass, progress feeling swift and easy, knee caps and hair, whole legs, summoned with ease, until Sirius can feel everything but a pulse. 

"I bet it's Harry's room," Sirius says over breakfast, licking butter from his fingers with relish. "Once Harry's room is all set I'm sure I'll be one hundred percent."

They choose a room at the end of the hall on the second floor, one with its own fireplace for Harry to floo in and out-- _a young man needs privacy_ , Sirius says. Sirius insists on doing all the work himself, scrubbing every inch of the room, from baseboards to crown moulding. He puts books about Quidditch on the shelves, hangs Gryfinndor red bed curtains, digs out pictures of James from beneath his childhood bed and hangs them. He puts a small pot for floo powder shaped like a snitch on the mantle-- the final touch-- with a grand flourish and stands waiting for a heartbeat that doesn't come. 

There's no heartbeat and Remus tries not to let his own heart break.

Sirius spends two days rearranging the entire room, moving the bed over there and the wardrobe over here, the desk against that wall. When that doesn't work, he changes the color of the sheets, puts chocolate frogs on the bedside table, adds books and takes them away again, convinced there's some magical combination he has to stumble upon to get his life back. 

Remus stands in the doorway watching Sirius aggressively scrub the window sill tracks with a toothbrush. Sirius hasn't spoken to him since he set the snitch floo pot on the mantle, only shaking his head and turning back to whatever task he's convinced himself is the cure when Remus tries to comfort him, to draw him away for a cup of tea or a meal. He hasn't come to bed the last few nights; Remus can only assume he's sleeping in Harry's room. 

He wanders back downstairs to where Luna is sipping tea, quill and parchment in front of her at the kitchen table, she looks up from her writing.

"How is he?" Luna asks.

Remus shakes his head. 

"I think I should go," she says.

"No, no don't feel like you have to."

"I want to."

Remus realizes he's feeling something like fear. How are they supposed to do this without her, he's thinking. How has he come to rely so much on this young woman, with her own life and healing and future to tend to; he's been so selfish. He tries to swallow down all the objections and guilt and find something reasonable to say. Luna, once again, comes to his rescue. 

"I've been thinking I'd like to apply for Unspeakable training, although I don't much like the term Unspeakable. Knowledge should be spoken, don't you think? But I could do fascinating research and call myself whatever I like. Anyway, I'd need to submit examples of my research and writing and I was thinking about writing up our research on bringing Sirius back from the Veil if that's okay." 

Ever the professor, Remus feels the glow of a student feeling their worth. "It's more than okay. That would be an excellent topic for that application, particularly the way you designed a powerful ritual from combining several different sources. I'd be happy to look over it for you."

"Thank you, Professor Lupin."

"Thank _you_. Perhaps everyone will call you Professor Lovegood."

Luna beams, smile bright as her hair. She chatters about all the magical creature research she'd like to do, using indigenous sources to fill in the gaps overlooked by the Institution as Remus walks her over to the floo. She hugs him around the middle and wishes him luck, holding his gaze as she steps backward through the floo.

  
  


Remus drifts through Grimmauld the rest of the afternoon, standing in doorways watching orange tinted shafts of light move across the floor. There are still so many rooms to fix up, parlours with dusty centaurhair couches and bathrooms with chipped tile and black ringed toilets; Remus wonders if they'll ever get to them all. It's endless. What will it take? 

He wanders into the front parlour, standing helplessly, the setting sun streaming in on the faded family tree tapestry, pockmarked with blackened singed holes. He traces his fingertips over the burnt edges where Sirius' name should be. 

Whole parts of Sirius have always been missing, black holes of history they've always had to skirt or risk falling in bottomless pits-- don't talk about the summer after fifth year, don't mention Sirius' mother, don't look at Regulus sitting on the other side of the uncrossable Great Hall, don't talk about Peter, don't even think about Azkaban, or this miserable childhood home. 

The charred thread crumbles under Remus' fingertips, the hole widening and Remus can see a lifetime of holes stretching out in front of them, their edges crumbling, a path always on the precipice, their hands clenched tight together, bloodless and vigilant, muscles straining.

He summons some thread and gets to work. 

His efforts are clumsy; his patches are tangled spider webs of thread, the lettering is childlike, he doesn't leave enough room for Andromeda Tonks' long name and has to curve it upwards to fit. Anyone could tell at a glance it's patched up, but Remus keeps mending.

The room darkens around him but he doesn't notice until he's straining to see the weave of the tapestry. He pauses only a moment to light a lamp before picking up his needle and thread once more. He's finished the Tonks branch of the family and starts another spider web patch over the burned hole that was once Alfred Black. 

His neck aches, he's pricked his fingers too many times to count and it doesn't feel like it will help much of anything-- an exercise in patience, nothing more. 

He starts Sirius' name, that precious name that's lived behind his lips since he was thirteen. The s's look wonky and the k is a mess but as Remus sits back on his heels to look at his work he hears someone stumbling down the stairs.

"Remus?" 

"In here!" 

Sirius careens into the room clutching his hand to his chest like a silent film comedian, staggering over to Remus and falling to his knees.

"Remus!"

He pulls Remus' hand to his heart and Remus laughs. "I won't feel anything there," he says and puts his hands around Sirius' wrists where there is a faint and intermittent pulse fluttering. 

Sirius barks that wonderful laugh of his. "How did you do it?"

Remus gestures at the tapestry. "I didn't really think it would do anything." 

Sirius looks up at twisted branches of his family tree, running his fingers over the rough patches Remus has spent the night sewing. He doesn't say anything and Remus starts to get nervous. "I wasn't quite done yet." 

"What else?" he asks, fingertips still stroking over his name. 

"Well," Remus says, "James Potter was your brother, was he not?" 

Sirius kisses Remus roughly, lips smashed together hard, then pulls back. "I want to watch you."

Remus stitches _James Potter_ , his s's still wonky, and _Lily Potter_ , their joined lines, and then _Harry Potter_. Remus swears he can hear Sirius' heartbeat in time with each stitch. Slow and inexperienced, it takes him half the night but even when the soft gray of dawn steals in he doesn't feel tired. 

Sirius' pulse is a small flickering thing but it's undeniably there. Remus leans back into Sirius' chest drawing his arms around himself and they sit staring up at the tapestry, softly illuminated by the dawn. 

"Give me the needle." 

Sirius fiddles with threading the needle and then starts stitching another line from his name, studiously not looking at Remus as an R begins to take shape. Never before has Remus had the feeling there was a future to be had, it was another hole never approached. 

Remus turns his head and presses his lips to the warm skin of Sirius' neck, feeling the steady thrum of a body brimming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!


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